SHANgri-La + el DORAdo = SHANDORA.

*nerd* *and a slow one at that*

So, it's been forever since I updated my journal. I'm so sorry, guys! There just... really hasn't been much interesting to say. I mean. Unless you find whining about being sick (in various forms) and twisting an ankle entertaining... >.>

ALTHOUGH! I spent the last few weeks at Afterglow Studios (the website really needs to be updated... orz) painting hooves and manes/tails because there was a show this weekend in St. George. The boss left on Friday. I got done with a fresian black's hooves late the night before. He was like, TOTALLY last minute rushed, right? And I'm freaking out because she used this weird red-blue shift powdery stuff so the black isn't actually black it's kind of purple-ish and I lucked out in managing to actually hand mix a combination that looked similar enough to do feathering on the hooves, and I know this is like, the ONE CHANCE I'll have at getting it done because 1) there's no tomorrow, and 2) I will NEVER get this paint combination again so even if there was a tomorrow for it, it wouldn't have mattered. Anyway. So. Late Thursday I'm finishing up with little hairs going down over the hooves and got to the point where the paint was just too diluted to be workable and said, "Aw, screw it. I don't care anymore," and cleaned up the brushes without doing a completely uniform job, as far as styling goes. The boss had complained that his hooves were too white and looked funny anyway so I figured after he did crappy at the show she'd bring him home and I'd have a chance to play with them some more without the last minute OMGRUSH! and do a really stellar job, right?

Well.

I got a text message Saturday morning telling me he'd just won the workmanship class for black horses. That's right. WON. Which is totally shiny and I'm elated, but it also means that because he won he's NAN qualified (which is the big Nationals show they have once a year) and that means that we can't actually change anything about the paint job or the finish until after NAN. Except that because he took first, he'll probably sell rather well and we'll ship him off with his NAN cards and never see him again. Also, STELLAR, but now I'll never get to actually make his hooves look... idk... uniform? And I know it's going to bug me until he's gone. >.>

Ok, now I'm just complainin' cuz really. Your horse won, cry moar! Haha. Anyway. I need to text Alley and find out how the others did. We finished another bay just before the fresian, and did some re-working on this like, psychotically shiny, sunny palomino who got dust in her gloss coat at the last show, up here in Orem.

In other news... Um. I started writing out Christmas cards in the hopes that they'll get sent out by January? Yeah... Hey! If any of my online buddies wants a little sumpin' in the mail for Christmas/New Years/Hannakuh/Kwanzaa/the Holidays, PM me your addies. I find I need to give myself reasons for drawing (Ha! And I call myself an artist) so making a little Holidays postcard for friends would actually be kinda fun. ^_^

At the behest of bookelfe, I am posting my initial thoughts on the show Legend. I could never hope to be as witty and entertaining as her post recommending the show, so I will state simply that it is entertaining enough to be watchable, whimsical enough to intrigue the fantasy fan, the acting is not so terrible that you'll choke but not so incredibly serious that you can't make fun of it, and the special effects are a bit clunky but cool enough that even I was gleeing over the pretty critters.

This is a much more thorough and entertaining look at the show.

This is a website where you can watch the episodes for yourself.

Happy viewing!

Wow, I totally forgot I had these. I made them at the beginning of the year as part of a secret santa exchange, so that dates them a bit. I had a lot of help from people suggesting color songs for me, though, which I appreciate beyond belief, so I wanted to post them and let you all see how they turned out. ^_^

( Cut to save your f-lists. )

Since I'm really getting into iconning right now (I'm so excited about the Master and Commander ones I made last night! Hee!) I simply could not pass up this particular meme. I don't know where it originated, but I got it from prpl_pen.

SO!

1. Choose an episode of an anime or television series you have on your computer. Make sure you're certain you want that one, you cannot change or mind once you skip this step. DO NOT TELL YOUR FLIST WHAT YOU CHOSE.
2. Make note of how long the episode is here -> 23:06
3. Ask your f-list to choose a time between 00:00 and whatever the length of your episode is. Be specific, (ie: 19:11, 21:09, 02:42)
4. Make them an icon using THAT FRAME ONLY no matter what it is. And remember, you can only use that ONE episode you chose previous, even if the person posting isn't familiar with it.

SPAM ME NOW!!! I'll make the icons after church today. ^_^

Jaa ne!

Edit: Ok, since it looks like I've gotten as many requests as I'm going to get, I thought I'd list my resources and whatnot. You know, give credit where credit is due. SO!

I used this table generator to post the images because I fail at LJ.

This texturing tutorial by iconsbycurtana is where I referenced texturing methods and a number of the textures used.

Light textures by uncreativ

Frame and color textures by eowyn_rus

Textures by daintybird

And of course, One Piece, made by Toei and Eiichiro Oda. ^_^

Edit2: I re-organized my photobucket account, so I apologize for all the broken links. You can see them here.

Hey look! A megaton of icons by Mags! This is my first official bunch, I'm really new at this, so concrit is definitely appreciated! I'd really love to be able to make spectacular icons. But we all gotta start somewhere. So yeah. Also, LOTS of secondary/tertiary character love here, guys. You've been warned.

Muse x 14
Calgara/Family x 2
Dragon x 2
Pell x 1
Crocodile x 1
Eyelashes/Nami x 1
Nico Robin x 20

( Icons galore )
Notes: Crossposted like whoa. Most are bases. If you use them, please credit me. Comments are appreciated. ^_^

So, today is Easter! It's an incredibly happy day for me. I always love talking about the resurrection, and what that means for us all. But today...

Today my friend's husband died. Right before church started.

And the promise of a very real and permanent resurrection never seemed so important.

Go. Get the brain bleach. Synapses. Dying.

So of course I had to share with all my interweb friends!

[You know you want to click]

Images under the cut. Hi rez images under the cut. You have been warned.

Edit: LJ is nice to peeps and posts a large thumbnail. Still, they are much nicer in high rez. So yeah.

( Read more... )

Hey all!

Yes, I know, I dropped off the face of the earth. Actually, no, I didn't. I've just been doing other things. Hehe. Anyway.

I got a few sketches done for Dragon's Own, but now I'm stuck. I'm working on the intro and I need an image of a sick old man in a bed with his family all around him giving the last of his life's power to a kneeling knight. And the figures, angles, background, armor (i.e. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IMAGE) are killing me! Has it really been that long since I drew people? yes. Am I really so out of drawing practice that I can't draw a bed? yes again. So... printmaking classes really did ruin me as an artist. I should have sucked it up and gone to more figure drawing classes, or taken more painting, as that would have lead me to work on landscapes and objects and such.

In other news all of my grades finally posted so I'll have my actual degree in short order. We also got a new digital camera for Christmas, so I've totally messed up my finally almost clean living room and am taking photos of all of my artwork in order to build a digital portfolio. This is a project I've been wanting to do for years, so yay! I like to end on a happy note.

Also, o/ to Nix and Rei. Hi guys!

Yes, I have new friends. I'm excited to get to know all of you better.

ALSO, for everyone on my f-list:

I'm making a recipe trade group. Please comment and let me know if you want to be in it. I'm going to send out a message to everyone on Tuesday, so they know all the names of the other people to friend as well. The idea is that you make a custom friends group, name it Recipe Swap, and stick them in there. Invite your friends, too. If it gets big enough, I might actually make a comm for it. If not, it's just a nice recipe swappy thing between friends. ^_^ I'll do my best to make a post in it at least once a month, but I'll shoot for once a week if not more often. My cooking style is very haphazard, so expect stuff like "Macaroni Surprise", which my husband loves, because I take a box of Mac and Cheese, and do different things to it every time. Sometimes its "oriental macaroni surprise", sometimes "tex-mex"... you get the picture. My husband has IBS, so the majority of my recipes are IBS friendly. I'll make sure to post a warning on those that aren't, or update the ones that we thought were good but then ended badly a few hours later. I'm not sure how widespread it is, but I know I have a bugger of a time finding IBS friendly recipes, so anyway, I just thought I'd put that out there, on the off chance that it would be useful to someone. So yeah. Let me know, k?

ALSO ALSO: I'm graduating on Saturday. \o/

Okay, here's a riddle for you. I have an idea for an icon theme, but of course my brain instantly fails when I try to think of anything for it. I want to do a series of icons that use lyrics from songs that have a color in them. For instance, "Little boy blue" from that Cat's in the Cradle song, or Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka-dot Bikini. There's also a song by Savage Garden that goes "The color inside your head- Violet". Random stuff like that. So, any help?

I've decided to branch out a little bit and try this whole posting art on LiveJournal. Let's see how it goes...

( Woot for the cut! )

So, the more I use my default icon, (the blue one you see here with this post), the more I think Ed looks scarily like Johnny Depp out of the corner of my eye.

Now you can't unsee it.

BWAHAHAHAHAAAAHHAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, yes it is. I found out about it in a deviantArt thread. There's also, apparently, Pirate Rap as well. Google them. It's lulzy.

Link to dA thread: clicky

Inspired by Badfic_Quotes. I made an icon. See it there in the icon box?

I present to you...

Badfic_Quotes!!!

This comm is really super funny, features tags so you can look up badfic quotes by victim, and has made both me AND Fox almost die, literally, of laughter on multiple occasions. It makes the existence of super awful Mary Sue atrocities... bearable. And the icons in the comments are some of the best I've ever seen. Ever.

But don't take my word for it. Go check it out for yourself. Now. Click the link. Then let me know what you think cuz I miss you guys so much!!!

So, I was looking up information on the ideal proportions, to see if there was an area of my body I should target a bit more than others so as to look better, even if I don't start dropping pounds right away. I found some research from the University of Texas rather interesting. Here's the quote:

Evidence has shown that women who have a larger waist-to-hip ratio (smaller
difference between the size of the waist and hips) are at greater risk of
contracting health problems, such as diabetes, heart disease and prostate
cancer, Singh said. (Source: http://www.psy.utexas.edu/psy/articles/news_singh.html)

Is it just me, or is there something wrong with what this guy said? I mean, I understand that a little waist and bigger hips is cool and all that, but I think it's a little extreme to claim that not having those proportions will cause prostate cancer in women. o.0 I'm very confused. And kind of giggling.

I just hope this guy gets a beta reader or something to look over his papers before he sends them in to get published...

What is it, the apocalypse or something? No. I just have the blogging bug right now I guess. Anyway.

So, still looking for viable job options. I put some stuff up on Etsy to see if I could get it sold. (Go check it out! http://magharabi.etsy.com. If Etsy doesn't work out, I might go try Ebay, but I thought there might be a better chance at Etsy, seeing as how it focuses on art. But then again, maybe not. Rar.

In other news: I freakin' hate ants. We have them all over right outside our house, and the little buggers just come on in and eat our cats' food. Oooh, it irks me. Well, we don't really know what to do to get rid of them because they only seem interested in the cat food, and cats have very delicate stomaches. We worry about anything we get to kill the ants making our babies sick as well. So we've resorted to patching up any holes we see with baking soda paste. Won't kill a kitty, but it's apparently salty enough that the ants can't eat it. Yay!

What was funny is that they had a pretty big opening in one corner of the kitchen (conveniently located right behind where we decided to put the cat food, too), but it wasn't quite big enough for the food chunks they were grabbing, so they had to break them down, and that's how I found it. So big tuff hubby patches it and we go about killing the "survivors". A few days later there are just as many ants as there were before. So I look and sure enough, the little buggers still have their line going... only this time they are fitting through the moulding! Thing is, they really have a tough time fitting themselves in the tiny space they've got, and they definitely can't fit any food chunks. So they start just piling it up in front of the spot they are coming through. I don't think they got any of it through. I cleaned it up today and patched that entire side with the baking soda paste. We'll see if that curbs their enthusiasm. Anyway. I just thought it was funny that they spent days and days gathering this food that none of them could ultimately use. Losers.

Well, it's time for a new post. Just cuz it's been forever and a day or more. Yes, I got married almost two months ago. Yes, i moved a month ago. No, I'm not done unpacking yet. I don't seem to be the motivated type anymore. Grr. I really need to get up off my butt and get some stuff done. I have five woodcuts to do on my own, as well as three classes and a part time job to whip up. But all said and done, things are going good. They are tight, but they are good, and I still love my husband (which he's very happy about. Those that know him know why that is.) Aaaand. Yeah. Oh yeah, and we finally got the internet at our new place. So there you have it. Hehehe.

Jaa ne!